The first word that came to my mind when I saw Benrali's books
was 'fractal'. The books are quite gorgeous, with each drawing
containing layers of exquisite detail that go on for ever,
or so it feels. I was tempted to pull out a magnifying glass
and study them as I would examine the detail on a skeleton
leaf.
The author, who goes by the single name Benrali, is from Guyana, of Indian origin, and combines several different artistic traditions in his books. According to the book summary, these include Balinese rainforest paintings, Japanese woodcuts, and Rajput, Turkish and Mughal miniature paintings. A more artistically educated reader would, I'm sure, enjoy trying to identify the styles and influences in each picture. I can only attest that the net effect is luscious.
The two books are called The Turtle's Dream and Keys and Manni From a World Beyond the Stars. They are very suitable for being read out loud to a child while the child and adult look together over the pictures. They are also suitable for an artistically-inclined older child who, I can imagine, would pore over the art and perhaps explore some of the styles themselves.
Each drawing fills the full page from edge to edge and is awash in colour. Occasional parts of the drawing are in black-and-white, which make the lovely colours stand out even more. All the drawings were hand-drawn in pen-and-ink and then overlaid with colour washes.
The Turtle's Dream and Keys is, not surprisingly, about a turtle. A box turtle, to be exact, who is waking up after the winter's hibernation. The text in the book imagines the dreams of this turtle
"back to a time hundreds of millions of years ago to an Earth found in the Iroquois legend, when Earth started on a giant turtle's shell."
Manni: from a world beyond the stars, is also about a turtle. This one is born on Shell Beach in Guyana, and the book follows his adventures with other denizens of the sea. The text in this book is in couplets, based on the structure of the ghazal, but is marred by the grammatical errors such as "it's" for "its" and vice versa. I found the text in 'Manni' more interesting than that in 'Turtle's Dream', but to be honest, in both books I thought the text was almost beside the point. For me, the story, such as it was, was merely a vehicle for the artwork which is completely worthwhile in itself. It would be a fascinating project for a child (or adult) to look at these drawings and make up their own accompanying story.